


aethon

by captainkilly



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Angst, Drunken Shenanigans, M/M, Minor Injuries, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Tumblr Prompt, drunk!Speirs is a LOOK okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27660614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: The taste of victory lingers on Joe's tongue, sharper than any words he can utter, and he's the one in control of the blade this time.What if you fly?his captain seems to want to say.What if you fall?he counters, and drives the knife home.
Relationships: Joseph Liebgott/Ronald Speirs
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	aethon

**Author's Note:**

> I don't rightly know what this is, but it was born of the prompt "things you said when you were drunk" and all kinds of shenanigans were there to be had. (I really, really need to stop giving birth to ship ideas like this. I do. But today, today we say hello to an unlikely pairing!)

* * *

Berchtesgaden is beautiful. It’d be simpler if it wasn’t, if the view all around wasn’t of mountains and woodlands that had never done a thing wrong in their life, but it’s as complex as anything else he’s encountered in Europe. Tab and Chuck had joked back and forth between them that they’re now where history comes from and so they should _behave_ , as if that’s actually something that pops up in their vocabulary as they burn through countries and people with the audacity only the young and invincible can possess.

Up here, above the world that has tried its best to pull him under and never let him up for air again, Joe feels pretty damn invincible too.

War’s over, they’ve said, and he might almost believe it here and now. Might almost think that there’s nothing burning down there anymore, that they’re not losing life and limb to desperation, that evil can just fade back into the shadows and never cross his path again. Whichever sins he’s committed don’t count when he’s on top of the world like this. Whichever darkness is in his own soul doesn’t get weighed by any scale of judgment, not when he’s on his third bottle of whatever Nixon had shoved into his hands all too knowingly and the world is set to a tilt and motion he can sway to better than to the swing dances back home.

_Your feet carry you to trouble, Joseph Liebgott,_ his mother used to say. He’d always argued _ma, they carry me home too_ , because he’s never landed himself in a jail cell or done anything he can’t come back from. She’d just stared at him, all five feet and a few inches of fury, and he’d dropped his gaze quick as anything. He takes after his mama, or so he’s been told by just about anyone who recognizes that Liebgott way of curling lovingly around the rage and letting it burn clean on through their body. Sure as anything, he lingers in those ashes and tries to make something soft out of whatever’s left. He’s his mother’s son, who has learned gentle only comes after words that cut and hands that leave their mark on the world.

Days like these, with the sun warm and hot in the sky and liquor burning down his throat even hotter, he might be prone to wondering what brand of trouble his new captain embodies.

“You a’ight there, sir?” he asks, because it’s the right and proper thing to do and his mama didn’t raise him to disrespect his betters. Decides it’s safe to point out the obvious, now that the man’s dark eyes are almost glazed over and he’s slow to respond. “You’re bleedin’ all over that rug.”

_Your feet carry you to trouble._ The thought lodges itself in his mind. He’s not sure if it’s his mother’s voice or his own that’s cautioning him. Not sure of anything at all now that his captain blinks and tilts his head as if he is a cat contemplating whether to keep toying with a mouse or simply kill it.

“Liebgott.”

His name sounds warm enough, void of the usual sharpness with which this man often seems to bend reality itself to his will. He waits in the doorway because something that sounds this warm has no business being dangerous. It’s just the name that lingers in the room, spoken in this soft murmur he has to strain to hear, and there’s something drunken in the syllables he’s not sure he likes. Something languid, coiled around the letters of his family’s name like a dragon shielding its golden hoard.

Something dangerous, he knows, and yet he persists.

“Captain Speirs, sir?”

“Joe.”

He blinks as his given name tumbles into the silence. It’s soft enough to be a sigh. Gentle enough to make him set foot in this room and close the door behind him. For once, it doesn’t feel like he’s sealing himself in a room with a wild animal. (It had sure felt like that when he’d ventured into a room and gotten caught in a stare-off between Speirs, who’d been pacing the room like a caged tiger, and Nixon, who’d gone utterly still like a fox waiting to pounce. He’s still not sure who had won that one, because their attention had flown to him and he’d felt clear-headed for the first time in a month.)

“Hey, sir,” he says, keeping his own voice hushed, “that don’t look too good.” He takes a swig from the near-empty bottle. Sets it down on the dresser beside the door. “Is it still bleeding now?”

Speirs seems to shake himself loose from his thoughts. One sigh and the intensity returns to his face all at once, as though he merely needs to slip that mask of seething calm onto his features when the situation calls for it. His eyes trace the rivulets of blood that travel down his bare arm. There’s blood on the armrest. Droplets of thick, red blood on the rug that Web had called _Persian_ with the air of someone who was raised with this kind of opulence beneath his feet.

“Seems t’ave stop’d.”

He hates how small Speirs sounds. How long it takes for the syllables to untangle, this time, spoken in an inflection that’s near-foreign in Speirs’s voice. There’s something sing-song about it, something foreign he can’t place, and perhaps there’s some history there too that Joe can’t fully grasp. There’s something slurred in the words that speaks of limited control, and judging by the empty bottles on the desk beside Speirs there is good cause for that too.

Joe hates how uncertain the words are, too, and it’s this that makes him grab a cloth near the wash basin and wet it decisively. He’s keeping his hands busy to stop from thinking. Focusing on the motions that go into preparing to clean blood off somebody instead of asking _how did you do this_ , _does it hurt at all_ , or even worse _are you okay do you need help_ because that line of questioning had always made him want to kill somebody.

He doesn’t know a whole lot about captain Speirs, but he knows in this they are probably the same.

“Okay, sir, gotta clean that up now,” he says. He keeps his voice so carefully level. Keeps it from shaking, even when Speirs’s demeanor has him six ways of rattled on the inside. Steps closer until he’s close enough to touch. “Can you flex your fingers for me real quick?”

Speirs’s hand trembles. It’s barely there, really, and he’s sure anyone but him and Doc would’ve missed seeing it. But it’s _there_ , and while his hand closes and opens without great difficulty there’s something uncertain in the gesture that speaks of hurt.

Joe closes his eyes. _Your feet carry you to trouble_ , his heart seems to hammer out somewhere between chest and throat. _Just see what kind of trouble you can stir up now, as if you’re always running toward whatever can set you aflame_.

He shudders out a breath. Drops to his knees at his captain’s feet. He doesn’t raise his head to meet the man’s eyes. Doesn’t have to, not now that he can feel those eyes burn holes into his skin and can practically taste the confusion in the air. His stomach swoops and jumbles up into that tangled ball he knows too well to unravel in anyone else’s presence.

“Okay. Good news, you didn’t break anythin’.” He feels confident enough to announce that, at least, because even Speirs would’ve yowled in pain if he’d flexed his fingers while broken. “Would advise not to fight the wall next time, though, sir. Wall always wins.”

“You’d know, hm?”

“Yes, sir,” he says, meeting the man’s searching gaze now that his voice sounds so darkly amused, “you know I would.”

“Hm. Yes.” Even the short syllables sound drunken tumbling from Speirs’s lips. The man’s eyes, though still intense through their stare, have more of a hazy softness to them than Joe is comfortable seeing. “It was a wall worth’a figh’.”

Joe glances back at the wall now that Speirs’s eyes fix on it, too. He’s not surprised to see remnants of Hitler’s portrait almost stripped from their frame, nor is he shocked to see glass shards sticking out of the map affixed to the wall beside it. Speirs, like Nixon, had rampaged through the available intelligence in every town since Landsberg with a ferocity normally beholden to combat. He thinks he recognizes this kind of war they’re waging, here. Appreciates the destruction that lodges the ash clear from his lungs and lets him breathe more easily.

He turns his attention back to Speirs. “Let’s get you clean, huh.” He reaches out with cloth and hand. Keeps his gestures slow and deliberate. “You can’t go meet anybody lookin’ like this, sir.”

“No meetings. We’re at peace, don’t –”

“We’re in the army, sir.” Joe’s mouth curves into a smirk as he grasps the man’s bloody wrist and begins to clean the road-map of blood away from his captain’s skin. “We got meetings for everythin’.”

“Gonna kill Winters if he sets one.”

“No, you won’t.” Joe laughs now that familiar determination has entered Speirs’s voice and makes him sound almost sober. Ignores how warm Speirs’s skin is against his own, how he can feel the man’s pulse jump beneath his grasp, how this closeness means he can hear the hitch in Speirs’s breath as he brushes the cloth over knuckles that already look bruised around the wounds. “You can’t kill your superior officer, sir. I’ve asked.”

“Gonna shoot me, Joe?”

“Nah, sir.” He keeps his gaze fixed on cleaning the blood away from the man’s knuckles. Attempts to ignore the treacherous flutter that settles deep inside his belly at the oh-so-casual teasing lilt that dips his captain’s words into something he’s quite sure they’re not supposed to be. “I can’t put Nixon through that much paperwork. And I like my head where it is, sir.” He pauses. Hesitates. Isn’t sure if it’s the drink or something else that makes him bold. “I like you just fine, too.”

“Just fine, huh.”

“Yessir.”

He moves his hand. Cleans the blood away from it best he can before his fingers come to rest against the man’s injuries. He taints the man’s tanned skin with smears of red, now that the cloth is bloodied, and he’s certain he’s not actually helping this much. The imprint of his hand lingers on Speirs’s wrist in varying degrees of red. He marvels at it a moment, so certain as he’s always been that nothing human could touch the man before him.

“Joe.” A sigh as the man’s fingers relax beneath his grasp. A dangerous, callous sigh of name and not rank. Of first name instead of last name, as if they are friends now or something like that. He doesn’t have the heart to correct it. “You don’t need ta –”

“Yes, I do,” he says, stubborn as he is like that, and ignores the foreign inflection that makes Speirs’s voice sound like a song. “Who else is going to take care of ya, sir? Roe’s drunk as a skunk – you did not hear this from me – and Spina is up to his neck in losing all his dignity in some kind of scheme Shifty and McClung got going.” He snorts at the thought. “Might as well be me playin’ the medic. Almost was one, ya know.”

“Why aren’t you?”

He shrugs. “Wanted to kill more than I wanted to heal, I guess.”

“It’s what we’re good at.”

“Yes, sir.” He nods at the appearance of the _we_ more than at anything else. Even drunk like this, Speirs’s choice of words seems carefully deliberate. “I think we are.”

“You’re good at healing, too. Me?” There’s laughter, real and genuine, spiking the room and Joe’s belly with unexpected heat as it bubbles out of a man who’s not prone to such amusement. “I break things. Easy as breathin’.”

_You break things, Joseph,_ warns his mother’s voice, and his hand tangles with Speirs’s fingers as he realizes he could break this so easy too. He could ruin everything beneath his touch the way he’s ruined countless things before. _Careful you don’t break a person someday, sweetheart._

_Ma,_ he wants to ask, now that Speirs’s fingers squeeze his briefly and the little breath he’s fought to keep expels itself from his lungs in one fell swoop, _what do I do when they’re already broken?_

It’s safer to look at the splotches of blood on the Persian rug than to look at Speirs. Hell, any place on earth is safer than Speirs’s dark eyes that see too much of everything he’s tried a lifetime to hide. He squeezes back, fits his fingers in the spaces between his captain’s fingers as though that’s right and proper to do, and waits for the inevitable blow that’s going to wreck him better than any alcohol will.

Spoiling for a fight, that’s him. Spoiling for some kind of combat, too, and this is the first time he knows he’d lose any kind of battle. Speirs is made of war. He’s part of it – so the rumors go, so people have whispered in his wake – and to engage with him is to challenge a god both capricious and cruel. Joe knows he’s got some kind of dying wish in his lungs, too, some kind of dark in him that says war can’t hurt him worse than the rest of life will, some kind of twisted knot in his gut that says there’s something _wrong_ about all the things he’s ever wanted.

The blow doesn’t come. Speirs’s hand is soft in his own.

“Icarus,” the man says, then, and Joe blinks at the name. He dares look at Speirs a moment. Isn’t altogether surprised to find the man gazing out the window, with the sun’s rays illuminating his face the way light is supposed to stream across chiseled marble. “I think I feel like him.”

Joe’s throat is dry. “Flying toward the sun, sir?” He rasps the question out. Smiles when the man’s face briefly betrays some consternation at being caught out like this. He loves being able to answer a challenge. Isn’t sure what challenge of his own he’s issuing now. “Or falling?”

“Fallin’, most assuredly.” Speirs’s smile is tentative but sharp. “Most devastatingly.”

“We’re on top of the world, sir.” He picks and chooses his words carefully. “At least Icarus got to fly close enough to feel the sun’s warmth. At least he got to fly at all.” Something uncurls low in his belly. Something he doesn’t care to examine. Something he already knows as intimately as any battle, but rarely gives into. “Falling is better than drowning.”

Speirs’s hold on him tightens. Their faces are close together now that he leans forward in his chair. He can smell the alcohol on his captain’s breath. Its sharp notes mingle with the very real warmth that suffuses the space between them. The man’s unruly hair mingles with his own. Brushes against his forehead as his captain leans in even closer. Joe suppresses a shudder.

“Have you flown before?”

Shivers tingle down his spine at how much like velvet the man’s voice sounds, now. How strangely lucid his eyes seem, even when the twang of alcohol dances in the air around him. He’s held captive here, he knows, and he decides to be remarkably glib about that knowledge. Anything to stay in control over the way his heart threatens to come to a stuttering halt.

“Yeah.” Joe shrugs. “Fallen, too.” He remembers the sting of fists on his face well enough. From the sharp intake of breath that follows, Speirs’s memory might as well be a mirror of his own. He steels himself for whatever blow is going to follow. “Still worth the leap, sir.”

_If your feet don’t get you in trouble, your mouth sure will._

Joe decides trouble tastes exactly the way captain Speirs does. Decides it the second the man’s lips brush against his, the moment light stubble grazes his skin, right that minute when he feels all his words are going to fail him. It’s fleeting, soft, feathery against his lips – this touch, this warmth, this slight pressure that’s not quite a leap yet but fluttering in the hope that it _could_ learn to fly. He smiles, knowing, tasting, feeling, and presses back against the touch. Invades personal space the way he’s invaded entire nations – young and invincible once more – and kisses back in chase of the heat he knows Speirs possesses. He can taste the cheap vodka on his tongue, quick as any bite, and briefly wonders if Speirs can taste the remnants of his drunken escapades the same way.

The man’s free hand curls against the nape of his neck. Pulls him close, brushes against his hair that’s getting entirely too long again, and remains steady even as Joe’s breath threatens to leave his lungs altogether. Warmth unfurls in his belly now that he knows a punch won’t follow, now that he can open up and invite mouth and tongue and hands so freely, now that there’s something of falling and flying in the way this feels. And oh, _well_ , he could get drunk off the taste of those lips, could go and soar from the way that tongue dances languid circles around his own, could live off this shared secret between one touch and the next.

When the kiss breaks, as all kisses do, Speirs’s mouth rests against his cheek a moment. He smiles as the man withdraws. Knows it’s not a dismissal when Speirs leans back in that chair and knocks back the remainder of his alcohol in one fell swoop. Knows it even as the man’s voice turns horribly sharp between the slightly drunk pronunciation of the words.

“Still not gon’ shoot me, Liebgott?”

He smirks. “Paperwork, sir.” Joe is the one to break the touch. Rises to his feet until he towers over his captain. He likes to think he’s being the clever one, even when he can’t help but grasp the man’s shoulder in a bid to steady himself. “Gonna have my head for this?”

“For daring? Never.”

_For a kiss, then?_ He almost asks. _Would you kill all reminders of the idea that you can feel anything at all?_

“Drunken daring, sir,” he says, not missing the shadow that passes over Speirs’s face at that kind of dismissal. Smiles his own sharp, almost vicious smile in return. Knows he’s being needlessly cruel. Knows the other man will let him drive the knife home anyway. “Best not to get carried away.”

It feels wrong to walk away from this. He knows Speirs won’t stop him if he does.

The act of leaving twists his mouth into something sour. Wrenches something loose in his chest that doesn’t flutter, but drops down into his boots like lead that attempts to anchor him to the earth. Wherever his feet carry him next won’t feel like trouble. Won’t feel like home, either, and for a moment he contemplates what staying would feel like. If it’d fill that space inside of him that hungers for the warmth of this touch, or if it would set him aflame with no regard for mercy.

_What if you fly?_ His captain’s gaze sets his skin aflame. Makes him fidget, makes him hunger, makes him want to fight the walls of Berchtesgaden and lose himself to this feeling. _What if you can reach the sun?_

He bites his lip. Tears his gaze away.

_What if you fall?_

Joe leaves.


End file.
